


the bones of your heart

by paenteom



Category: League of Gentlemen (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paenteom/pseuds/paenteom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You just remember his eyelashes and how they were close enough to count, and his small frame, slightly out of focus and frayed at the edges, fingers pushing and pulling at you, pulling you apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the bones of your heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jasmine](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Jasmine).



**i.**

“I did everything for her,” he says, “everything, Phil”. His breath smells faintly of vodka and hurt and you mumble things that are meant to be soothing against the low creaking of the bed as he moves closer; count the light specks on the wall (one, three, six, thirteen) until you’ve deluded yourself enough to pretend you don’t feel the heat radiating off his skin. 

His glasses lie forgotten on the sodden carpet. You try to remember how you got here but the alcohol swallowed up whole hours; and he whispers “Sometimes it’s like my head is filled with white noise and it drowns out everything else”, whispers “Please”, whispers “You’re the best friend I ever had” and his voice tears the silence like a wet tissue until suddenly his fingers are curled in your hair and his lips are pressed against your own.

You can feel his pulse beating against your skin and your eyes are wide open as his mouth moves hesitantly against yours, his damp hair brushing your forehead, his hands feebly gripping your collar in an attempt to pull you closer. 

You try to remember a time when you didn’t want this but it feels like a whole different life, and you notice the tear streaks on his cheeks, and the broken bottle on the carpet next to you (he’d dropped it hours ago and you had said “Well they do say broken crockery brings you luck” and he had laughed and his voice had been full of bitterness, “Not to me, it doesn’t” and you recall the way he’d stood on your doorstep this evening and how broken he had looked and how he’d said “She left me, Phil, Linda left me”). 

Suddenly you desperately need to breathe.

“Don’t,” you say, “Don’t, Ollie” and your hands come up to push him away until he falls backwards onto the bed, his eyes wide, and he looks so delicate and small in that moment, like an accident waiting to happen.

 

**ii.**

You’ve been driving for hours.

Your joints are starting to ache and you’ve long run out of conversation topics, so you keep to watching Ollie and the way his fingers grip the steering wheel far too tightly (and he’s strangely vibrant against all this grey, the pale sky and the dusty fog draining the colour out of the world around you, the incessant, dull drumming of the rain painting shapes against the window), but you still tut at him whenever he breaks the speed limit, although the road is void of any other cars.

He’s always mocked your clamant need for order, how you have to file people away into neat little boxes to make sense of them in a world that doesn’t make sense at all (and you wish it was this easy with him; one broken heart: catalogued, classified and stamped), but he’s chaotic, cluttered and confused and painstakingly human, all pale skin pulling over frail bones.

You notice the animal before he does. It all happens far too fast for your hazy mind to comprehend and the frames are all blurred and tangled up in each other like the limbs of lovers (Ollie frantically yanking the steering wheel in the opposite direction, the screeching of tires on the wet asphalt, that small moment where you’re almost sure that this is it — and then silence).

And there are words tripping over your tongue, almost stumbling out of your mouth into the stale air (“I love you, you scattered all over my life and sometimes it makes it so hard to breathe, I love you, I love you, I love you”), so you bite down on your lips hard enough to draw blood to stop them from escaping.

His palm is pressed against your breastbone right where your heart beats furiously against your ribs and his lips are moving against the hollows of your throat (“Are you alright, are you — shit Phil, we almost died, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”) and all you can do is hold on to him, fingers curled into the soft wool of his jumper, because you’ve been almost dying for so long.

 

**iii.**

Sometimes you think back to it (that one night in Ollie’s bedroom), replaying the scene in your head countless times, but you can’t remember a thing about how the kiss felt; you just remember his eyelashes and how they were close enough to count, and his small frame, slightly out of focus and frayed at the edges, fingers pushing and pulling at you, pulling you apart.

 

**iv.**

“He likes you.”

“Don’t be stupid, he doesn’t.”

Dave laughs and elbows you in the side and you smile back, stealing a glance at the new bartender through the grimy window of the pub. Ollie is quiet next to you, the soles of his trainers rasping against the grey asphalt now and then in time with the music filtering through the closed pub door.

“He was probably just staring at you because he figured out you’re a poof.”

Your knuckles collide with the side of Ollie’s face before you’ve even properly thought it through.  
He’s staring up at you from the pavement, mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for water, and you’re surprised at how calm you sound (“Why do you always have to ruin everything for me?”) because your head is in shambles and everything hurts.

Your fingers curl in on themselves and you stuff your throbbing fist inside your jacket, shake off Dave’s concerned hand on your shoulder and push open the pub door. The stale air (cigarettes, cheap perfume and loneliness) hits you like a tidal wave but you just hold your breath and stomp on in the direction of the bartender, don’t breathe in until you’ve gasped out “Hi, I’m Phil. Are you free after work?”

You fuck him on your birthday.  
The way you kiss is frantic, a mess of teeth and tongue with no finesse (and you can’t help but think about how different it is from the slow, shaky way Ollie kissed you, even when this isn’t about him, even when you shouldn’t) and it’s over in a manner of seconds, you still in your underpants, him coming over the back of your hand with a soft groan.

On the morning after your birthday there’s a trail of water from the bathroom to the kitchen and two cups on the kitchen table (and you still mumble “One or two sugar?” when you’ve already dropped three into the cup because some things never change), and Ollie is watching the kettle while his fingers tap along to the rhythm of a song on your old radio. 

You watch the steam curling in front of his eyelashes and there’s a stillness to you that you don’t recognize; so you stand there, helplessly, in the middle of the kitchen, water dripping from your fingertips onto the tiled floor, and you keep waiting for the ache to come; and he smiles and it doesn’t come, and his fingers brush yours and it doesn’t come, and he says your name and it doesn’t come, and you’ve lived with the ache for so long that you don’t know how you’ll survive without it.

 

**v.**

There’s the low rumbling of a car engine somewhere in the distance, and moths dancing towards the light and then there’s you wrapped in your old winter coat and him shivering lightly in the cool night air. Street lights are ghosting over him and painting shadows on his face, and your conversation is low and punctuated with quiet laughter (“Can’t really call it stargazing, can you? There aren’t any fucking stars to gaze at.”) and you think to yourself that this is it.

This, him and you on the stairs leading up to your flat blowing smoke rings into the night sky, him whispering “You’re the best friend I ever had”, it’s enough.

It’s enough now.


End file.
